Moon Phase - Advanced Mode

Tristren · Jun 9, 2019

Ok, I'm 99% sure that there was not an "Advanced mode" option for the moon phase when I was setting up my lights a few months ago.

So currently (under the "basic mode") settings I have a start and end time for the moon phase.
I then pick the channel(s) that I want to use for my moonlight, and set the maximum levels I want for full moon nights.

This has a setup similar to seasonal lighting, where you pick the zenith and the max duration, and it calculates the range of intensity and duration from there.

But this does seem different in that it has a set duration. And also has the option to shift the zenith depending on the moon phase.

That all sounds great. But I would like to understand it better before switching it on. Because presumably this would affect my lights during the day as well... So is this more for setups with dedicated moon lights?

@Matthias Gross, @Marco@GHLUSA, @Vinny@GHLUSA?
@Lasse, @Ditto?

Amazing how the features keep on growing...

Cheers, Tony

Ditto · Jun 9, 2019

Your spot on

This allows you to actually adjust the lunar cycle to what you wish it to be, just as easily as you can adjust the seasonal table. What this allows is to have people have the lunar adjust to where they live, or if they wish reverse the moon cycle, have it on during the day while lights are off and so forth.

I have not played with the duration thou, but yes it would impact any illumination channel you set on it so it could impact your lights during the day but so does the basic mode

.

I am not sure about the duration

Scdell · Jun 10, 2019

Interesting. I find the moon phase to be a little bright myself.

Tristren · Jun 12, 2019

Ok, so I played around with this a little bit.
I created a new "phantom" channel to see the effect on that, and I made one active channel react to Moon Phase to watch that.

The moon phase is currently at 64% and current brightness is 75%. Min and max brightness were initially 0%-100%.
The phantom channel was at 40%, the live channel at 80%.
[see image at bottom of post for context]

I switched to the Moon "Advanced Mode" and selected the "shift zenith time dependent on the moon phase". Once I clicked save, both channels dropped to 0%. Don't know if that makes sense given where it is in the cycle but really not sure.

I then changed the Min brightness to 10%. Once I clicked save, the phantom channel stayed at 0%. The live channel shifted to 100%. That is particularly odd as it doesn't go to 100% at any point.

Turning the "shift zenith time dependent on the moon phase" off causes the live channel to drop back to 0%. Switching back to Basic Mode causes them both to their regular settings based on the illumination channel settings.

So having said all of that I think that my takeaway is that we need actual information on how this works, what the different options do, how they interact with the channel settings etc...
@Matthias Gross or @Vinny@GHLUSA or @Marco@GHLUSA , is there documentation for this?

Cheers, Tony

ingchr1 · Jun 16, 2019

I don't use the moon phase, but is Advanced Mode not available when controlling an LX7 directly?

In GCC it's grayed out and in the app and web interface it doesn't display.

Tristren · Jun 18, 2019

ingchr1 said:
I don't use the moon phase, but is Advanced Mode not available when controlling an LX7 directly?

In GCC it's grayed out and in the app and web interface it doesn't display.

That's interesting. I have Lightbars, sounds like it isn't available in that setup.

@Marco@GHLUSA ?